sorry i didn't see the request till just now. i have to go to work shortly and will be working ti'll midnight so i cant do ot today. but i will work on it tomorrow and will try to get it done in a day or two. dan gave a link to the download in marcies thread so thanks dan. and i'll use firefox with spell check on so there shouldn't be as many typos. and i'll post what ever i get done as i get it done.

announcer - oh man, welcome to bundy town where sacred cows were skewered and good taste was ridiculed

griff,ike,bob roony- this is the soty of married with children, the e true hollywood story.

announcer- in march 1986 after acquiring 20th century fox film studios for more than a billion dollars ruper murdoc made an announcment that shook the very foundations of hollywood. the Australian media baron was going to launch a fourth tv network in the united states. to many in the industry murdoc's plan seemed foolhardy if not laughable. abc, nbc, and cbs had ruled the airwaves since the 1950s. the big three were firmly entrenched in americas living rooms capturing 90% of the available audience. in the mid eighties viewers were feasting on dramatic fantasies like dallas, and sticky sweet family sitcoms like the cosby show. producer michael g moye

moye - america was riding a huge hige cosby wave, so much so that you could not walk into a network and pitch an idea that didn't have upper middle class mom, upper middle class dad, seventeen or eighteen children, that all got along together.

moye and his partner ron levitt produced the jeffersons for cbs and co created the nbc sitcom silver spoons. by 1986 the two had enough of cosby mania.

moye - we were sitting around watching this phenomenon happen and saying man we bet there are a lot of people who absolutely hate this. so we set out to do the flip side.

announcer - levitt and moyes conceived a sitcom about a contentious working class couple living in the chicago suburbs. the two characters were loosely bassed on rosanne barr and sam kenison.

moye - we just said we wonder what it would be like for these two people to be married to each other.

announcer - in 1986 the producers got a call from garth ancier, a 28 year old president of entertainment at fox broadcasting.

garth - i sought them out because i just thought they were very funny writers and went to their office and got on my, got on one knee and said will you please come to this new network and produce a show for us.

announcer - to sweeten the pot ancier made an unusual offerbefore a show was even discussed.

garth - we would go to producers and offer them an on air series commitment, so what we offered mochael and ron was an on air series commitment for six shows at the new fox broadcasting company.

moye - they wanted to program things you couldn't see on other networks. and that was pretty much up our alley so we kind of pitched them this.

announcer - this ofcorse being a loose version of what became married with children. ancier loved the idea. e online columnist anderson jones

anderson - if you are going to go up against the big three what are you going to have that is different. and the key for fox in the initial years was doing things that was a little off beat, things that appealed to the minority to some degree, was to do programming that appealed to urban communities and young men.

announcer - moyes and levit quickly wrote a twenty page treatment that fleshed out the couple. the husband al became a hapless shoe salesman. the wife peg was a lazy slob.

garth - the working title of the show became not the cosbys.

announcer - ancier approved the treatment and sent the producers off to write a pilot. levit and moye added a teenage daughter kelly, a bimbo's bimbo. and a young son bud, a clasic under achiever.the characters were brain challenged, the jokes raunchy, the family bickered constantly.

anderson - it absolutly was a show that wasn't about hugging.

announcer - levit and moye named their fictional working class heros the bundys.

moye- they were all named after professional wrestlers. the bundys were named after king kong bundy, who was a huge major guy at the time. a lot of people thought we named him after ted bundy. no we named him after king kong. you know the good bundy.

announcer - in the pilot and obnoxious yuppie couple named steve and amrcie rhiads moved in next door to the bundys.

garth - ron felf that if you are going to have the experienced couple in al and peg, you had to have a newly wed couple madly in love right next door so you could sort of just make fun of them.

announcer - fox executives gave the producers the greenlight to shoot the pilot. the show would be produced by columbia pictures television where levit and moye had a development deal. casting took place in october 1986.

garth - we offered the all and peggy roles to rosanne bar and sam kenison and they both passed.

announcer casting director mark hirschfeld

mark - i always felt kennison and rosanne would be a little too harsh and unrelenting. you needed to find people that could get away with saying some of the cruel things they had to say and yet still remain likable.

announcer - thatproved to be easier said than done. the part of al bundy, the dad who dosn't know best, seemed impossible to cast

moye- we had probably seen every quote unquote funny guy in hollywood. eighty percent of them read it like ralph cramden, and we said well that has already kind of been done.of the other twenty percent it went form you know just ranting raving and bellowing to this quiet maniacal "i'll get you in your sleep peg" kind of guy.

mark - michael richards auditioned for al bundy. he wasn't right for al bundy but a couple of years later when i was doing the original casting for seinfeld i thought about michael and thats where he got the role of kramer

announcer - the producers quickly found a strong canidate to play al's wife peg who spent her days watching tv and her nights hounding her reluctant husband for sex

garth - katey sagal had at that point been an actress we had seen before on the mary tyler moore sitcom before that she had been a harlette for bette midler before that.

katey - i played sort of this wise ass kind of you know cigareete smoking person that tortured mary tyler moore so they sent me the script and um i though it was histiracly funny but i though this is just way too out there for like real people to think ots so funny.

announcer - 31 year old sagal had her own vision of what she thought peggy bundy was like, and it wasn't rosanne

katey - she was written kind of like a slob, but when i went in for my audition i kind of dressed in this 50s house dress and i put my hair on top of my head and i wore these weird little glasses and i dont know why i just sort of did this sort of what i thought she would look like and she was defiantly a little more dolled up than it had been written

mark - the way she sort of carried herself was as if she didn't realize she was so low class. and that to me was the part of peggy bundy that she created that was the most fun.

announcer - to play the dim daughter kelly bundy the producers cast 15 year old tina caspry who had minor roles in movies. the role of kelly's little brother bud went to 11 year old hunter carson the son of actress karen black. the part of steve rhoads was written for 35 year old david garrison a musical theater actor. garrison starred in levit and moyes 1984 sitcom it's your move with jason bateman.

garrison - ron and michael called up and said we are doing this pilot for this new netwroky thing something fox television. we dont know if it's going to go or not but would you come out and shoot the pilot for us. and i wasn't doing anything so i thought sure i would go out to L A and shoot the pilot and i would come back to new york and that would be the end of that.

announcer - for steve's sex crazed banker wife marcie casting director hirschfel auditioned 28 year old amanda berse. berse was known to sop opera fans as amanda cousins on all my children

mark - she hadn't really done a lot of comedy but took to it like a duck to water. she was just great.

amanda - initially i based her on my mother as a complment to my mother because when all else is falling down around her my mother has a very gracious side that she will just be there smiling when the world is crumbling down and that was sort of marcies experience in the pilot episode when she was first introduced to her new neighbors the bundys. it was quite frightening but she had a smile on her face thru out the whole thing.

announcer - then there was the bundy family dog, a three year old briarde named buck landed the role

buck- i studied at the royal academy. i knew i had as we say i had the chops.

announcer - that still left al bundy

moye - we were probably a week or two away from reading the pilot and we still didn't have an al.

mark - ed oneil i had actually seen a couple of years earlier in a play at the harvard stage of mice and men where he played lenny. and he was just terrific. he was mainly a theater actor and a dramatic actor. i thought maybe he can do comedy and maybe he can do this.

announcer - hirschfeld brought in 40 year old ed oneil to audition for al.

so far that a little less than 12 of about 90 minuets. i'm gonna take a break then i'll do more butthis may take me more than a day or two to complete. sorry if you needed it faster, but i'm gettingto the point where i am spendingmore time fixing typos that writing anything down. i'll get out more in a few hours, but it took me over two hours to do that ten minuets.

rdo3 wrote:announcer - in the next two hours we will bring you into the home of tvs most dysfunctional family, the bundys. ... we'll give you face time with al, peggy, kelly, bud, and even the family dog buck.

Last edited by rus21 on Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

announcer - oneil had just played popeye doyle in a tv pilot based on the french connection. levitt and moye were skeptical but desperate

moye - i thought oh great, the drama popeye doyle is comming in to reado dor a comedy. good, then we can read ephrem zimbalest jr, you know really good work guys.

announcer - oneils agents and icm were equally enthused

oneil - my agents said actually i hate it but they do want to see you and um so i kind of forgot it then i had lunch with another agent and he brought the same project up and said it's just awful, but it's kind of funny, but it's awful then another agent said the same thing the same day and i said i have to read this.

announcer - oneil liked what he read and decided to meet with levitt and moye

ineil - i was just so relaxed because i had no intention of reading for it or ever doing it.

moye - apparently he just came from a hand ball game. so he came in in like a t shirt and he was like kind of sweaty and i knid of liked that

oneil - and he said you want to read a couple of pages and i said yeah ok

moye - and he did something that noone else did and the imaginary door he had to walk thru when he was comming in from work, he stopped at the imaginary door closed his eyes and gave just this little sigh then came in the door. as soon as he did that he didn't have to say a word i said i said this is al bundy.

oneil - i was just imitating my uncle which was sort of a self deprecating sense of humor rather than yelling alot i was just saying fine. the dog got hit by a car, fine, whats for dinner. and so they liked that.

announcer - the producers hired ed oneil on the spot. with the cast in place not the cosby show was recristened married with children. the pilot was scheduled to shoot in december, just before christmas

amanda - comming up

oneil - o really did think we were kind of the shock troops for fox

christina - and later

katey - that was a devastating and to this day is a devastating experience

announcer - by late 1986 the pilot of married with children was cast and ready to be filmed. but in an era of the cosby show and growing pains a vulgar sitcom about the worlds most dysfunctional family was going to be a tough sell and the nervous executives at fox knew it. the pilot of married with children was shot in los angeles in december 1986. all the elements jelled except the parts of the bundy children

moye - we knew that these kid were going to be integral to this series, you know and that was the one place we thought maybe we could do better.

announcer - diving back into the talent pool the producers came up with 15 year old christina applegate. apple gate was known to tv audiences as a regular on the 1986 abc police drama heart of the city.

christina - they showed us the pilot and my mom and i sat there on my bed and watched this thing and didn't want to laugh. just didn't want to laugh but we were just cracking up.

announcer - the pilot script also found its way to 12 year old actor david faustino. faustinos resume included a stint on the 1985 cbs detective series i had three wives

faustino - i didn't get the jokes either because i was only 12 and i know there was a lot of sexual innuendos and jokes about being married and obviously the tone of the show so took my mother and my dad they read it and they were like this is funny

moye - when faustino came in you know he had that baby face but you know he had pretty much the eyes of evil. we knew that he would work

announcer - applegate and faustino were hired and resot the bundy kid sceans for the pilot. fox executives liked the new version, but they were concerned with a teeny bit of content.

garth - there was one that was written that was about pms and what pms stood for. and pms according to al stood for pummel men's scrotums. we thought that was probably one step over the line that we anted to go with for a show that was already you know this on the edge.

announcer - the pms lines were removed but the brass was still worried.

marc - the network was nervous about going with an al bundy in particular who was a complete unknown, who didn't have a peice of comedy on his resume

moye - they brought in the professor, you know some guy who tested shows since like sid cesar. he was the grand master show tester guy

garth - and the show tested moderatly well, it did not test badly

moye - and then he made this grand summation and he said if you can show that despit all their sniping that this is a sloid family unit that really do care about eachother deepy you know i think you have a good shot at something wonderful here. and there was this long silence in the room. and then ron got up and said " you sir are the reason telivision sucks". and we both walked out.

announcer - fortunately married with children had a champion in gart ancier

moye - garth didn't seem to rely on research and development as much as "i think this show is really funny"

announcer - ancier increased the show order from six to thirteen episodes. levitt and moye were thrilled. in the mean time fox executives were preparing the rest of their slate, ten and a half hours of prime time programming much of it centering around prestigious stars such as george c scott and tracy ulman. or high concepts like the teen oriented police drama 21 jump street.

moye - we kind of got a sense early that married with children was not exactly the flagship show that fox would have preferred.

oneil - i really did think that we were the shock troops for fox. you know that theory that you know you hit the beach and they get mowed down by the machine guns then you bring in your big artillery and big troops

announcer - on sunday august 5th 1987 fox launchd it's first season, the line up included married with children.

garth - at seven o'clock we ran married with children into tracy ulman. at eight o'clock married with children into tracy ulman, at nine o'clock married with children into tracy ulman, all the same episodes and then hoped that over the course of the evening people came throughout the evening to sample the shows.

clip
peggy - now al do not eat or drink anything because they may have to use the bathroom after you. end clip

anderson - really the idea behind married with children was to get some attention. here they had a show that they knew might get the censors a little riled up

clip
al - who were you with today
kelly - nobody
al - dies nobody have a name? you know like tom, dick, cobra with a cigar sore on his mouth
kelly - oh dad its not that kind of a sore, he just fell asleep with a cigar in his mouth. end clip

anderson - the critics reaction was widely varied. ysa today loved it. a lot of other newpapers didn't love it so much

announcer - not that everyone could even see the show, fox was in 86% of u.s. homes, but in most of those homes fox was on hard to find ufh stations

rdo3 wrote:announcer - in the next two hours we will bring you into the home of tvs most dysfunctional family, the bundys. ... we'll give you face time with al, peggy, kelly, bud, and even the family dog buck.

if i missed the peegy line it was "lets not talk about who cant find what in the dark

Garrison -this some group that had pie plates on wire coat hangers cow pastures around America sending out their signal

faustino - after the show was on about two or three weeks I actually these are the kind of thing to do when you're twelve I went to the mall and I wore my married with children shirt just waiting for someone to say all you're the guy and if not one person said anything

Announcer - the ratings were less than stellar

moye - they were microscopic we were probably from CB radio in half the country I mean no one could get us but they were very low but we seem to be just a hair above other sitcoms and as the weeks went on we seem to widen our gap

announcer - slowly but surely audiences found their way to the bundys producer Kevin Curren

Kevin Curren -OK you felt this guy was Al he was a high school football hero he doesn't know how he got to this place now knows he's miserable and that he feels there's nothing he can do about it except like maybe one of his insane obsessions will pay off and he is with this woman he doesn't really know why anymore but he knows he will be with her until he dies

Clip
Peggy - some men like going shopping with their wives
Al - sure buying coffins end clip

Announcer - Director Jerry Cohen

Cohen - character and never would have lived without O'Neal he was the one guy who was perfect for Al

Al - old sure on the surface selling women's shoes is fun but one should cut through all the hype the myth the glamour is really like any minimum wage paint slow death end clip

O'Neal - I love doing the character I really do it reminds me of you know people I grew up with the Young Town steel mill kind of people they have that I don't know there's just something about them the cell deprecating sense of humor where they know nothing's gonna be right slide that Hank Williams when he said don't worry about it not going to work out right anyway sort of like that with Al

Clip
Peggy - let's not talk about who can't find one in the dark end clip

Announcer - with her teased hair tottering heels and withering delivery Katey Sagal made a sassy sparring partner for O'Neal

Sagal - I had made some suggestions about wardrobe she was trashy are I think than was written I just thought that these two people who had such a combative way of relating to each other to have some sort of hot something to them I thought I would spice her little bit

Announcer - like a mother like daughter

Anderson - Kelly was beautiful Kelly was hot and she knew it Kelly knew that was all she had going for her she absolutely made the most of it as well

O'Neal - Cristina has a great understanding of what makes something funny and how to work it

Curran - he would come in kissing his muscles have that attitude of narcissism and self obsession and nerdiness

Announcer - as the bundys neighbors Steven and marcey rhoads david garrison and Amanda burse were perfect comic foils

Clip
Marcy - when we have a child we don't want it to grow up with that winning is the only thing attitude child is better off not being exposed to sports
Al - you going to neuter him too end clip

Garrison - for Steve Rhodes he got such a bad rap the slightly uptight but underneath that uptight exterior there was a seething volcano waiting to emerge

Amanda - she sort of wore the pants in the family but she let him think he did they had a nice balance of a relationship it was only until he came under the influence of Al things started not working so well for Marcy

Announcer - everyone was off kilter even the family dog

Buck - I was the reason you tuned in Christina yes she's OK she's kind of cute Al meh peggy bud they're really in the background though buck is the glamour guy

Announcer - show's characters were undoubtedly broad

Clip
Al -your hands off my CD player
Peggy - Al we don't have a CD player
Al - well we would have taken if you haven't said anything end clip

Announcer - but the writing under the direction of executive producers Levitt and moye was razor sharp

Clip
Peggy - with men if you ask them for something you're never gonna get it but if you do some damage to their internal organs you've got a shot end clip

Announcer - producer Kim Weiskopf

Weiskopf - they're both very bent they're twisted guys they are sick puppies both of them now I say that in the good sense

Conway - they were expressing what people really express you know time to time in their home I mean it's no secret people do is talk about sex and their house and stuff of that nature if they didn't I wouldn't be here I'm sure so they just taken a step further but they kept in line to keep it funny and by keeping a funny I don't think it was as offensive as it could have been

Announcer - married with children ended its first season reeking 142nd out of 163 Primetime shows

Sagal - we were just all their doing a show that really made us laugh we thought it was so funny and it was very rebellious and we sort of just didn't care

Announcer - fox broadcasting reportedly lost $90,000,000 its first Primetime season but owner Rupert Murdoch was prepared for the long-term hall when the Network Software season launched that follow married with children was on the schedule

Anderson -most of the fans of married with children were people you expect convicts and prisoners a lot of middle America a lot of the people called white trash lots of kids in college

Cohen - we got a letter one time from a guy, I lived in Pennsylvania somewhere, made us feel great and we stuck up on the wall and he said guys I have a job I really don't like and my family life is not the best and I'm not where I would like to be in life and I wanna think you guys though I can sit down on Sunday at the end of every week and all that no matter how bad my weak as been Al bundys has been just a little bit worse

Announcer - married with children prove that there was an audience for unsentimental family comedy with edgy humor

clip
Monkey peggy - well Al once again you have enriched our lives are father kids
minkey kids - thanks dad end clip

Announcer - in October 1988 ABC launched its own blue collar sitcom Rosanne

Cohen - without married with children Roseanne would not have come a the Simpsons wouldn't have come a long this show kind of paved the way.

Announcer - Roseanne immediately became a ratings block buster at the end of its first season the sitcom was the number two Primetime program in the country right below the Cosby show

moye - they would do some simular of things and it will be called bold and innovative really edgy stuff and when we would do it they will be called gross and there they go again it was called toilet humor and I didn't understand that and then I found out that in many parts of the country saw the Roseanne episode first because it was more available to them

O'Neal - coming up

Terry Rakolta - this is network television and I'm being assaulted with my children really these really strong images

Announcer - married with children wrapped its second season in 1988 show was finding an audience that loved it over the top offensiveness but viewers hadn't seen nothing yet. to Launch season three Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye boldly decided to go where no producers had gone before

Moye - a couple of writers that we had, women, told us that when women live together start to menstruate at the same time and we thought this was fascinating and said hey as something that's never been done before

Announcer - the writers came up with an episode call period piece. In this story the bundys and Rhodes go on a camping trip

Cohen - Peggy Marcy and Kelly all start their periods so the men find themselves locked in an isolated cabin in the woods are with women that aren't in the best frame of mind and are tending toward a little aggressive and are short tempered and lo and behold the animals and beasts of the fields and forest get wind shall we say of what's going on and then bears and moose lay siege to the cabin

Announcer - the episode was too much for fox broadcasting executives

Clip
Al - what do they do give it to each other end clip

Moye - I guess they felt this was knowledge left best unshared so you know we kind of had a disagreement there

Announcer - there was no disagreement from the women on the show however

Sagal - Amanda Christine and I could not stop laughing we could barely get through the taping

Moye - I don't think we were going any further out there than they do on Tampax commercials

Announcer - executive producers argued over script changes married with children scored a milestone on November 27 show became the first talk show to be viewed by more than 1/4 of all households viewing at that time

Anderson - married with children became the calling card of the fox executives who clearly were not going to do things the way they had always been done it with a shutout to ABC and NBC and CBS we are a brash network we are a young network we are going for a demographic you have been ignoring

Announcer - period piece finally aired on December 7 with many changes including the title

Moye - nobody ever sees the titles of the show's but fox did not want it called a period piece phishing alike guess somewhere they would say hey oh woman might see that she menstrates and get really offended so we called it the camping show which that helps them there that was sort of I mean kind of a precursor to what was coming

Announcer - on the night of January 15, 1989 terry Rakolta sat down with her children to watch TV Rakolta was an upper class 41 year old from Bloomfield hills Michigan

Rakolta - I decided they could watch married with children thinking it was a family show because I hadn't heard of it until up till then

Announcer - married with children however was not the family programming Rakolta as anticipated.

Clip
Al - Steve aren't you ashamed of yourself
Steve - oh come on al, she was asking for it how she's dressed end clip

Rakolta - I sent my kids out of the room infact my little boy went like this when he saw that with his hands

O'Neal - very funny episode that was one of my favorite lines and that show where were the sales lady said what is your wife's size and he said about like this here she says 36 D you're a lucky man and he says if they can alcart

Rakolta - Al Bundy wanted to buy his wife a bra for her bithday it was a discontinued bra so he wound up in all these situations looking for this bra. This is my house I don't bring this stuff in this is network television and all the sudden I'm being assaulted my children especially with these strong images me you know adult material is adult material and I don't have a problem with that when more adventurous materials when it's on after 9:00

Announcer - Rakolta was livid after a series of phone calls Rakolta manage to reach one of the producers of married with children

Rakolta - she had a very condescending tone she said of the valid program we are pushing the envelope of television our viewing audience is a beer drinking audience 18 to 35 she said finally Mrs. Rakolta if you don't like what to wear seeing I suggest that you stand up walk over to the television and turn it off

Announcer - Rakolta decided to write to heads of the major companies that advertise the married with children

Rakolta - start a boycott of all your products starting with my family friends and church

Anderson - and a few actually responded married with children we didn't even know what kind of show that was we are so surprised and shocked

Announcer - Rakolta tactics worked Procter&Gamble McDonald's and Kimberly Clark immediately pulled their ads from the show are representatives from Coca-Cola and wendy's wrote to Rakolta vowing to screen married with children before placing any more ads Rakolta sent copies of the letters to a few major newspapers

Garth - I had just left fox and went to Disney when I picked up my new your times and there in bold terri rakolts was boycotting fox and married with children

I am sorry for not posting for a couple of days. I lost about 5 hours of work switching between tabs in my browser and accidentally closed my reply tab. To avoid this happening again I decided to try using speech recognition in word. It takes hours to train the speech recognition. It is also boring. So I was listening to music while doing it and didn't know that my brother kept calling over and over and saying hello hello hello hello every time he called. The background noise filter programmed itself to read more in every h sound as background noise. You would be surprised how many words use the letter H made it useless and frustrating. I threw my headset breaking it. So after buying a new headset and totally retraining by speech recognition I'm back

Moye - new issue reaction was all this is great to be great publicity never in my wildest dreams knowing it would get blown up the way got blown up

Announcer - producers of the ABC News show nightline or already primed to do a show on trash television. Call two was flown to New York same day the article appeared on the front page of the times

Rakolts - I was sitting in front of monitor white with fright and they showed Steven Bochco he was doing I guess L.a. law at the time said if they don't like what their scene turn off their god damned TV and I heard him say that and I thought he is really swearing and how could he get away with this and then there was sort of that again that arrogance from Hollywood

Sagal - turn it off

Cohen - lady change the channel

Rakolta - that was kind of the bus line. My responses as we have more options than to get up and turn off the television. Yes I can get up and turn off the television which infact I have turned off the television before and for network television but we watch cable

Announcer - following her appearance on nightline rakolta and made the talk show rounds. She described the events and she recalled them all that took place in the episode should watch with her children

Rakolta - he wound up in a store where the men were watching porno movies and walking around bent over with erections and I'm thinking hoping that my kids aren't really understanding what's happening here in the male stripper stripping down to a G string

Moye - it was a frederick's of Hollywood likes the store that he and Steve went to and I think that was that the episode. She claimed to have seen things that weren't there

Announcer - publicly for fox executives supported the show privately however they began scrutinizing the scripts for potentially offensive subject matter

Anderson - show host she succeeded keeping off the air was the show fans called the lost episode called I'll see you in court

Moye - Stephen Marcy go to this hotel this romantic little honeymoon motel as it touted itself. You know it had the heart shaped beds and the tapes you watch to get you in the mood and all of that and they came back bragging about it you know how a rejuvenated their sex life so they wanted Al and Peggy to go

Cohen - Al and peg were at the motel and they flipped on the television and popped a tape in the VCR and the tape happened to be of Steve and Marcy having sex and they realize the motel was secretly videotaping customers engaged in very private acts in a motel rooms. Steve and Marcie sue the motel in court and won

moye - show was about Al not wanting to sue because his performance was a little quick where Steve and marcys was a three part tape

Faustino - it was so quick they couldn't prove they had intercourse

Garrison - that was won over funniest episode but if you can believe it fox Fox broadcasting thought it was too racy

Moye - these guys were hysterical and at this point is quivering under their desks in pools of urine

Bearse - Ron and michael's nature's were to push the envelope and then of course it's the networks job is sort of hold it at bay

Announcer - as the controversy surrounding married with children mounted so did the curiosity of TV viewers

Anderson - everyone wanted to see the show everyone was making so much noise about

Faustino - people started saying ohh my gosh this is funny

Cohen - this woman inadvertently put us on the map and we became a hit

Rakolta - kept saying the ratings were getting higher and higher because of me I wondered why they weren't sending me a fruit basket a Christmas

Moye - the advertisers that pulled out three weeks later wanted back in because by that time we were fox's number one rated sitcom

Announcer - almost all of the advertisers' returned to the show and the media rakolta was branded with eppoths like economic terrorist and ayatollah Rakolta

Rakolta - there were really vicious things said about me and it got very very personal which I never thought it would I was really knieve.

Faustino - at the end hustler magazine gave her asshole of the month

Rakolta - Larry Flynt calling me asshole, I really thought this was the bottom of the food chain

Announcer - Rakolta felt she had lost the battle not the war

Rakolta - I started up an organization with 400,000 people constantly in contact with the advertisers'. Why organization and its issues became much bigger than married with children. Married with children was really delete in it was the advent of shock television

Announcer - at the end of the third season the media frenzy surrounding Rakolta settled but the impact of her activism and continued foxs executives kept a tighter rein on the married with children scripts

Moye - we wound up getting a lot more notes than we did before hand and this went on for quite some time

Announcer - in 1989 married with children became fox broadcasting's first breakout hit thanks in part to angry Michigan housewife and its fourth season the show would lose a number of its cast but his replacement fit in perfectly in the twisted bundys universe and an episode that aired November 12, 1989 the characters of Steve and Marcy are demoted after Steve made a bad loan to al. As the fortunes of the couple dwindled their marital problems grow

moye - initally we played him and Marcy is very yuppified and materialistic and as evolved or devolved into a man of the forest obviously our Marcy couldn't stay together and

Announcer -story line was actually a device to allow David garrison to leave gracefully. 37 year old garrison wanted to return to his roots

moye - he is a Broadway guy he is a theater guy and what he wanted to do he was not going to be able to live his first love which is Broadway on something like married with children

Garrison - one of the reasons I chose to leave which was a very hard decision was because I wanted to keep working and not just be that image in the popular culture

Announcer - garrison made his final regular appearances on February 4, 1990 on the following episode Marcy discovers Steve is gone.

Bearse - he left to become a park ranger follow the his dream in the wilderness

Garrison - after I left the show I would come back every year once a year Ron and Michael would write an episode where Steve, comes back had a whole other life

Clip
Marcy - it's nice to see you are still such a sarcastic twit Steve, besides I thought you were in the desert protecting the wildlife and profiling guys and dolls with your little cactus friends
Steve - that much like our marriage with just a phase

Announcer - the producers gave garrison a sentimental sendoff

Garrison - day gave me a huge photographs the was actually a mug shot from one episode where Steve had been arrested with the bloody lip and they had wrote across it, you're going to have to bleep this for your audience, got a sing got to dance got to starve to death

Announcer - for the remainder of the fourth season Marcy was manless.

Bearse - I sort of floundered as a single person but the name of the show was married with children so they needed to hitch me up pretty quickly

Announcer - Michael Moye and Ron Levitt wanted someone completely different from Steve. In the fifth season I called a veteran sitcom actor Ted Mcginley to play a new character a hunky gigolo named Jefferson Darcy

Curran - we had this idea of the really hunky guy coming in and mooching off of Marcy

Bearse - Jefferson was a bit of a con a bit of a slick and guy never really want to work too hard

Ted Mcginley - for me it was a whole new audience I had come from happy days and a love boat and the various sweet candy sort of material

Announcer - 32 year old Mcginley made his debut as Jefferson Darcy on January 6, 1991. In that episode Marcy wakes up after a drunken binge at a bankers convention to discover her life has changed

Bearse - Jefferson and I had a one night stand I think a very inebreated one night stand that happened off camera thank goodness and I woke up with him and I was married

Ted Mcginley - Initially I didn't have that much to do so why would stand behind Marcy and asshe would talk I would go because nothing else was happening she would turn around and catch me eventually and people would start laughing

Bearse - I was definitely wearing the pants definitely earning the money and Jefferson just wanted an easy life and I think I saw that happening with Marcy

Clip
Jefferson - I thought you wanted me to work
Marcy - I do is just that I have another position in mind for you

Announcer - even though the cast and liked Ted Mcginley and he faced the difficult task of replacing David garrison and winning over the show's rapidly growing fan base Bundy on line webmaster Paul Tilton

Tilton - originally people were not too happy with as people just in general are not happy with change still like the Steve character

Ted Mcginley -I would say it took two years before people start to accept Jefferson and like him

O'Neal - He hung in there and eventually came up with this one a character that he did sieve and I thought that it worked very well

Anderson - the best thing about him was that he provided bundy with a foil he was like a best friend

Ted Mcginley - the bundys whole purpose in life was to use anything and anybody create a better life for themselves if they had to and I think Jefferson and the bundys had that in common

Announcer - While mcginley adjusted to his new role, Christina Applegate felt with the pitfalls that come with playing a dumb sexpot on a hit tv show

Sagal - Christina got a lot of attention that i think sometimes made her uncomfortable and i think that overall she handled it pretty well

Applegate - Because i was so different i dont think i ever attached myself to the idea of being stereotyped

Announcer - Harold Sylvester, Tom Mcklister, and E E bell played Als buddies on the show

Mcklister - she is probably the smartest person in the United States

Sylvester - total opposite of that character

Announcer - 19 year old Applegate tried to play against the Kelly bundys stereotype in 1991 the actress starred as a resourceful heroine in the film don't tell mom the babysitter's dead but on the set of married with children fans were more obsessed with Applegate skimpy outfits than her acting ability